"A child's learning is the function more of the characteristics of his classmates than those of the teacher." James Coleman, 1972

Saturday, March 08, 2014

No Unnecessary Testing, Not No Testing

Submitted to the Indy Star, March 8, 2014Tim Swarens writes that "Diane Ravitch’s opposition to accountability isn’t realistic," (March 7) because we need to "identify those who excel and those who lag behind."Agreed. But we don't need to test every child every year on every subject to find this out. The NAEP test, a zero-stakes standardized test, is given to samples of students every few years, and the results are extrapolated to get an accurate assessment of how districts, states and the country are doing. If we want to expand the NAEP to measure performance for individual schools, we need to determine, through careful study, how many students need to be tested and how often. The evaluation of individual students is best done by teachers, according to recent research. When you go to the doctor, they don't take all your blood, just a sample. I recommend the principle of NUT: No Unneccessary Testing. Test as much as we need to and no more.